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Postgraduate English Postgraduate English www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english Issue 27 September 2013 Editors Michael Shallcross and Avishek Parui ‘I will spout a jet of blood in your face’: Women’s words in the Tain Bo Cualinge, its pre-tales and the Fingal Ronan Claire Harrill University of York 2 ‘I will spout a jet of blood in your face’: Women’s words in the Tain Bo Cualinge, its pre-tales and the Fingal Ronan Claire Harrill University of York Postgraduate English, Issue 27, September 2013 The prominence of women in Early Irish literature has often been mistaken for a sign of their power and autonomy in medieval Irish society,1 but it is clear from the law codes that they had no legally recognised powers of speech and could not give testimony as witnesses.2 This essay will investigate how women’s words are manifested in the Tain Bo Cualinge, its pre-tales and the Fingal Ronan, an Early Irish king-tale from which the quotation of the title is taken. The Tain Bo Cualinge (henceforth Tain) is an early Irish epic that forms part of the Ulster cycle of tales, Old Irish stories that would have originally existed in oral form. It tells the story of Medb, the queen of Connacht, and her husband Ailill’s war with Ulster, which is defended only by the young hero CuChulainn, with the intent to steal the Donn Cualinge, a bull of supernatural strength and size. The Fingal Ronan is an early Irish king tale which survives in one copy in the Book of Leinster and tells the story of Mael Fothartig, who was murdered by his father because of the accusations of his father’s new young wife, whose sexual advances he had rejected. 1 Kelly, Fergus. A guide to early Irish law. (Dublin institute for advanced studies 1988) 68. 2 ibid 75. Harrill Postgraduate English Issue 27 3 The power and independence of characters such as Medb in the Tain belie the oppression of women in medieval Irish society. However, in the Tain, its pre- tales and the Fingal Ronan, even such powerful women as Queen Medb struggle to make their voices heard in a society that seeks to suppress them. The law that proscribes women’s speech also makes any attempt to speak into an act of dissent, because any woman’s words that demand to be heard are by nature a challenge to this law. This challenge most often takes the form of violent non-verbal expressions. This is the only recourse these women can seek in a society that excludes their words. Women whose words of frustration, anger, shame and despair are ignored find expression in various physical outpourings, from the outpouring of noise in Deirdre’s fatal scream to the outpouring of blood in suicide or menstruation. These non-verbal, bodily expressions form a kind of ecriture feminine3 that both dissents from and seeks to circumvent the proscription against women’s words and find expression that cannot be ignored. The legal status of women, and particularly their speech, in Early Ireland sheds light on the various ways in which women attempt to make themselves heard in the Tain, its pre-tales and the Fingal Ronan. Contemporary law codes describe a society in which women had no independent legal power, were considered ‘senseless’ by the law4 and, crucially for this essay, in which their words did not count as legal testimony, thus denying them a legally recognised 3 See Cixous, Helene. ‘The Laugh of the Medusa.’ Signs 1.4 (1976). 4 Jaski, Bart. ‘Marriage laws in Ireland and on the continent in the early Middle Ages.’ The fragility of her sex?: medieval Irishwomen in their European context. ed. Simms, Katharine. (Four Courts Press 1996) 18. Harrill Postgraduate English Issue 27 4 voice5. From a society that ignores the words of women is born a literature that not only shows their frustration at a thwarted desire to be heard, but also functions as a censure of the society that excludes their voice. One of the most poignant examples of men’s absolute disregard for women’s words is found in the Death of Aife’s One Son, one of the pre-tales to the Tain. Emer calls out to her husband CúChulainn to try to stop him killing his own son: ‘hear me! / My restraint is reason’.6 Her desperate call to be heard is met with the riposte from her husband, ‘It isn’t a woman / that I need now’ (43); he rejects her words simply on the grounds of her sex. Because she remains unheard, CúChulainn kills his only son, thereby committing fingal (kinslaying) and severing his own line. Through Emer’s voice, this tale becomes not only a critique of warrior society, as Findon has suggested7 but also a critique of a society that actively chooses to be deaf to words of sense and restraint simply on the grounds of the sex of the speaker.8 In opposition to the Death of Aife’s One Son, the Fingal Ronan seems to be suggesting that women should not be listened to. In the Fingal Ronan, a woman’s words precipitate, rather than prevent, fingal (kinslaying). In the Fingal Ronan, Ronan’s wife – who is never named – uses her words to falsely claim that her husband’s young son Mael Forthartig has propositioned her for sex by replying to a quatrain that Mael speaks with the implicating lines, ‘It is a vain herding, / With 5 Findon, Joanna. ‘A Woman’s Words: Emer versus Cu Chulainn in Aided Oenfir Aife’ Ulidia (Belfast December Publications 2004) 145. 6 The Tain ed. Kinsella, Thomas (Oxford 2002) 43. All subsequent references to this edition are cited parenthetically in the text. 7 Findon, ibid 148. 8 For a full discussion of Emer’s words, see Findon, Joanne. A woman's words: Emer and female speech in the Ulster Cycle (University of Toronto Press 1997). Harrill Postgraduate English Issue 27 5 no kine, with no lover to meet’9 (542). However, the false accusation is motivated by the woman’s desire for independence. She has been married to an old man whose own son acknowledges him as ‘no mate for a girl’ (538), and been denied the affair with the young man she desires. She does not have so much autonomy as to merit even her own first name; she is defined solely in relation to men, as ‘the daughter of Eochaid’(539), or as Ronan’s wife. Thus the destructive nature of her words, the resulting fingal, is an unintended consequence of her desire to choose her own lover and regain some independence. Since in Irish law women could only testify in sexual matters10, she is forced by the law to use her voice in the only context in which it will be recognised – to claim Mael propositioned her for sex – in order to desperately assert any kind of control over her own situation. The Tain itself is also set in motion by a woman’s desire for a legal voice. In the pillow talk that opens the narrative, Queen Medb is eager to prove that her material possessions are equal to or greater than Ailill’s. According to Irish law, it is only in the case of ‘marriage on woman contribution’ or ‘marriage of common contribution’ that the woman is as free as her husband to make verbal contracts and dispose of their joint assets.11 Medb asserts that ‘[her] fortune is greater than [Ailill’s]’ (52), and it would be, were it not that the bull Finnbennach ‘refusing to be led by a woman, had gone over to the king’s herd’ (55). Even the animals seem to support man’s natural supremacy over woman, and thereby present the 9 ‘How Ronan Slew His Son’ T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover, eds. Ancient Irish Tales (Dublin, Alan Figgis 1969) All subsequent references to this edition. 10 Findon, ibid 145. 11 O’Corrain, Donnchadh O'Dowd, Mary, and Sabine Wichert, eds. Chattel, servant or citizen: women's status in church, state and society: papers read before the XXIst Irish Conference of Historians, held at Queen's University of Belfast, 27-30 May 1993. Vol. 19. (Dufour Editions 1995.) 46. Harrill Postgraduate English Issue 27 6 suppression of woman’s voice in law as natural. Some have read this as a demonstration that Medb is, because of her sex, no apt leader for the Tain.12 This is patently not the case; not only does the stronger bull, the Donn Cualinge, not distain to be led by Medb, but also Finnbennach meets a gory death because he was foolish enough to distain Medb as a leader. Medb’s need to prove her greater possession of assets seems arbitrary when it is clear that she is able to make verbal contracts and exercise her political and social power without the permission or help of Ailill, or any other legal authority. The army gathered for the Tain is explicitly ‘gathered for [Medb]’ (60), not Ailill. The raising of the army and the execution of the cattle- raid not only acquire for Medb the bull that will prove her superiority in law, but also enact this superiority before it is legally proven. Medb would not be able to raise an army and take the bull unless she was already powerful and influential enough to make verbal contracts with men to raise an army and control her husband. The Tain presents the irony that, though a woman is powerful enough to raise an army, the law will not recognise her as such or give her a legal voice unless she has material possessions equal to or greater than her husband.
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